Winter Olympics: Australia's David Morris reveals the emotions of landing the most difficult jump in aerials

Australia's David Morris has moved up in gold medal calculations for the men's aerials after landing the most difficult of jumps in training.

AAP: Dan Himbrechts

Australian aerials star David Morris has opened up about the new weapon in his arsenal for the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, the toughest jump in the sport which he has just landed in training for the first time.

The secrets of the five-twist

Speaking to the media two days out from the start of the Winter Games, Morris went into detail about the five-twist, three-somersault jump he completed at the aerials team's training camp in Finland — and the stress he had to go through to achieve it.

"I nailed it last week," he said.

"We turned up one day, and the weather was fantastic — it was no wind, blue skies and my coach was just like, 'we're doing it today', and I was like, 'all right, then'."

Morris finished 24.09 points behind Kushnir in the silver medal position, but the result showed he needed a bigger jump to move up to the top step of the podium.

"I've been ready for quite a while, I had to, I guess, just man up and do it," he said.

"It was easier than I thought it'd be. It was just very, very scary but once I did it, I went back up and did another one.

"Just having the weight off my shoulders — it's been a career goal for me for a long time.

"That's the reason I came back [to the sport], to do that five-twist."

Dale Chapman, senior sports physiologist at the Australian Sports Commission and performance manager for skeleton and bobsleigh at Pyeongchang, told the ABC there was no physiological advantage to doing a four-twist jump compared to a five.

"They will still approach the ramp at approximately 60 kilometres per hour," Chapman said.

"In order to complete five twists, the athlete will have to deal with the greater rotational speeds, importantly they must be able to stop the rotation forces from this extra spin and land squarely and ski out straight — the judging element of the sport requires a straight line take-off, landing and ski off — all of this increases the element of danger/risk when performing the trick."

It all will come down to timing and maths — the four-twist jump that Morris did in Sochi has a degree of difficulty (DOD) of 4.525.

The five-twist back double full/double full/full that Morris has now landed is similar to the one that Kushnir is hoping to defend his title with — it has the ultimate degree of difficulty of 5.000.

Russian 19-year-old star Maxim Burov — who beat Kushnir in Lake Placid last month by nailing a four-twist, back double-full/full/full jump — will also be in calculations in Pyeongchang.

But what Morris has done is level the field between him and most of his top rivals — and turns the Australian into a genuine gold medal threat.

Now everyone has to wait until the final late on Sunday, February 18 (starting 10pm AEDT), when hopefully he will get to show if he can stick the landing when it counts.